I want to start off by showing appreciation for all the great feedback and support I have got since I started trying to do my part to help with the initiative this month. I feel so grateful to be a part of this community and I would like to participate more. I had planned to do an update much earlier but my anxiety had been getting the best of me for a while. It feels weird trying to talk about this kind of stuff but I and obviously many others agree that it's an important topic that needs to be discussed more openly.
So in my last post I proposed this experiment 'My strategy is that if I challenge myself to post consistently on here, then maybe I will be too busy and too 'in motion' to let my anxiety to take over. And once I have posted consistently for 90 days then I should have created a habit and maybe I can use this to get over my anxiety.' I had originally planned on posting more mental health topics because of the small window for the challenge here that goes until the end of the month but I had a hard time getting into it. I did manage to get some kinds of posts out continually with mixed results.
I found that I actually had more anxiety posting consistently
Oh no! My experiment must be failing. To be fair, there were some other factors to consider. For one, we have got some snow in my area since my last post and it has been quite cold so it has been difficult to get out of the house as often as I like. Going for a walk has been a really good tool for me to calm myself down when I get anxious so I haven't been able to unwind as I usually do.
Sometimes the anxiety can create these negative cycles. I started feeling worse about being anxious all the time and how I was trying to do this cool experiment but it seemed to be backfiring. I was so sure that I was onto something because I even got a helpful comment on my last post about how that seemed to be a common theme.
Then it dawned on me
What really is the goal here? It wasn't just about not feeling anxious... It was about not letting it stop me. I think this is where a misconception about mental health comes from. Sometimes people oversimplify mental health as if it's just feeling good on a scale of 1-10. It's perfectly normal to feel off sometimes and I think we need to give ourselves room to have some ebb and flow in our lives. To me mental health is a culmination of things. Tools that help us get ourselves back on track. Support systems so that we have people to talk to when things aren't at their best. Taking time to meditate on things so we get perspective. Finding gratitude where you can. You can't always choose what happens to you but you can choose how you react to it.
The other day I was having a rough night, having some panic attacks so my adrenaline wouldn't let me sleep very well. So I was up very early and I checked Hive and someone had left a really nice comment on my post. It doesn't seem like much but I found it quite helpful and it seemed so strange to have such a open and supportive community of people I didn't really know. But I really appreciate it. I have been following the mental health awareness challenge and there just seems to be many people who genuinely want to help and be supportive around here. I have found many strategies that I'd like to try out and it was great to see so many perspectives on the subject. I'd like to play a more active role here to show my appreciation but I sometimes have a hard time feeling like I'm part of something.
Honestly, I'm not really show how to judge all this. I guess this experiment seems to be working. I'm doing a bit more of what I set out to do and I seem to be getting better at it. I have met some really cool people through my posts and I am really grateful for all the support I've got. Even if things are still challenging, all that seems to be a huge boon compared to where I was at before I started. Thanks again for all the support and everything you guys are doing to support this challenge this month. It might make more of a difference than you think it does.